2014, 3: Loop den Hague

March saw me reach the first quarter of my resolution year and what better way to do it than heading to the Hague and then running all around it?! And even better, an old friend, Kate, had seen on Facebook that I was heading to the Hague for the race and felt inspired to join me, inviting me to stay with her whilst I was there.

I arrived and was met warmly by Kate, her partner Nic and Rosie the dog. We had a big dinner and headed for an early bed to get some rest before race day.

All three of us had decided to race, although we are all very different runners: Nic is big on gadgets and timing and PBs and heart-rate monitors and tracking, I’m the complete opposite but definitely a committed runner, and Kate had never run in a race before.

We had enormous bowls of porridge and berries before going to get another train south from Haarlem to the Hague, or den Haag as they say there.

Loop den Haag is an enormous race that runs around the capital of the Netherlands, mostly through parks, along a few residential streets and down a looooog highway to finish back in a park again. In it’s 40th year and with some 40,000 runners it is by far the biggest race I’ve run. It took twenty minutes to get to the start line after the gun went..!

We had agreed beforehand to all run our own race and didn’t stick together, to be honest with 39,997 other runners we’ve have been hard-pressed to stay together even if we wanted to.

I quickly lost Kate and Nic as they raced ahead of me, whilst I stuck religiously to my slow-start strategy. I like to tell myself that its all part of a clever negative-split (running slowly first and finishing quickly) but I’ve never managed the bit where you speed up for the second half of the race. I do find though, that it helps me get to the end without running out of legs, so slow start it was. As ever.

Although Loop den Haag is very busy, I also found it curiously quiet. I’d heard that Dutch people can be a bit reserved and it certainly seem that way, there wasn’t a lot of talk amongst runners and very little noise from the spectators- people tend to cheer when their friends ran past, but not generally for any runner coming past them. It was also an extremely hot day for the time of year- 18oC and the race began at midday, so the sun was high in the sky and beating down throughout. I was beginning to worry about getting dehydrated as I hadn’t prepared for such a hot day, but thankfully the water station was well stocked and they passed out sponges for cooling down your body, as well as cups for drinking. In the heat of the moment (HA!) I covered myself in water and then remembered my phone in my pocket….

Nic raced ahead and finished first, Kate second and I crossed the finish line to to get my medal and an ice-lolly!